In the manufacture of semiconductor wafers and semiconductor devices, regarding manufacturing apparatuses, to prevent various types of soiling, attached substances, and so on, or due to vapor deposition processes being carried out, in general hermetically sealed chambers are used, and apparatuses in which such chambers are connected together are widely used.
Moreover, in the manufacture of semiconductor wafers and semiconductor devices, housing means called a wafer carrier is used for conveying wafers and transferring the wafers between apparatuses. With such a wafer carrier, a large number of semiconductor wafers are held in a line by means of a large number of grooves provided in an inside surface of the wafer carrier.
Every time the degree of integration of semiconductor devices is increased, it is required to reduce the amount of attached matter on semiconductor wafers, and hence there is an increase in the required degree of cleanliness in the various process apparatuses and so on. Consequently, oil films and so on caused by oily components or the like that have leaked out from a pump or the like of any of various manufacturing apparatuses installed in a clean room or sebum generated from workers in the clean room, which are difficult to remove, are the most loathed contaminants.
In the case of cleaning a series of apparatuses that have been installed using a cleaning liquid containing a surfactant or the like, another way of cleaning is required, and hence contamination occurs in chain-like fashion; in general, a surfactant is thus not included in the cleaning liquid, and hence it is extremely difficult to remove the above-mentioned oil films and so on.
Furthermore, carriers of which the inside and outside surfaces have become soiled through repeated use are cleaned since this soiling will cause contamination of the semiconductor wafers. Up until now the cleaning of wafer carriers has been carried out through automatic cleaning using a high-pressure jet, Megasonic cleaner or the like, or hand brush cleaning using an organic solvent. However, it has not been easy to remove extremely minute silicon pieces that have become stuck in a carrier.